Beyond prediction?

Animal behaviour and criteria of good literature:

By Padma EDIRISINGHE

Rare visits to my friend, resident in Galle generate much fuss in that household but one such visit was overshadowed by another event to which I became a mere spectator. This family has a huge Alsatian who performs many tricks. One is when commanded to do so, to bring into the house a fallen coconut from the garden, husk it with her fierce teeth that she performs to perfection.

Whenever Nanda was minus household aid Sheba would oblige in this strain and act the domestic aid role dutifully. The day of my visit resourceful Nanda had got a media crew to photograph Sheba perform this task and do a sensational feature on it. Neglecting me who had come some 100 km they were all anxiously waiting for the media crew to turn up. Sheba had been given a special perfumed bath and made to look glossy and attractive as far as bitches could be.

Now arrived the much awaited media team, cameras were poised and everybody was excited. The neighbourhood was in toto there as eager audience of shooting a TV programme. Sheba kept going about in a terrific maidenly gait amidst the crowd shaking her massive physique sexily and quite ignorant of coming events.

"Putha" said Nanda to Sheba, an endearing term she always uses both for humans and animals, "Go and bring a coconut and husk it for me like a little darling."A coconut had been placed just at the entrance for faster action. Little darling, so huge swaggered outside haughtily wagging her tail. (I deliberately use "Her" and "She" instead of "its" and "It" as an honour for a living being. Just a sideline comment that our Sinhala grammar code is much more sensitive than its English counterpart where animals are put into the inanimate category.) Sheba just ignored the coconut, ambled ahead vibrantly and stood admiring the landscape that stretched beyond Kaleigana to the beautiful city of Galle.

"Now, Now, Putha, Bring the coconut. I have to cook."

But Sheba just looked at the mistress in a demeaning way giving the impression that she smelt something fishy and walked on further. "She would bring one from the heap there", said Nanda hopefully. But Sheba instead walked to a coconut tree and began to dispose of her waste water in a languid manner. It was clear that she was not going to oblige any mediaperson come from Colombo or New York. The disappointed crew just bundled up their paraphernalia and walked away muttering low curses while my friend was almost in tears. She had imagined her dear pet just queening on the mini screen and tantalizing an islandwide or global audience. That was a great dream, flopped miserably.

The matter would have ended there and not got even press recognition had I not come across an article, "Animals I have shot" in an old Reader's Digest which carries the blurb "The writer, a host of a popular TV show tells why some scenes never make it to the screen." "The theme is on the writer's track of a parakeet who imitates a popular news broadcaster who sums up his news always by saying, "And that's the way it is!"Like my dear pal, the owner of the parakeet in the Western hemisphere had contacted a TV crew to give publicity to this feat.

In this instance the head of the team had first made an informal visit to hear the parakeet greet him by saying, "And that's the way it is!" So he came back loaded with the baggage and accompanied by his crew.The lens were poised at the cage and everything began rolling. The parakeet looked at the camera and said, "AAAAK." The owner said "And that's the way it is" to give him a cue. The parakeet again repeated "AAAK!"Many ruses were adopted to get the bird to imitate the newsman but all what emitted was the typical bird cry. Then when the team was going down the steep slope utterly frustrated, they heard the parakeet say, "And that's the way it is." Come to think of it, even Nanda's abode is on a steep hill and called "Hill House." That team too descended the hill utterly disappointed.

The writer recounts another tale about a dog who carries the grocery bags of his mistress. Informed of this feat the crew set out and there the woman and the cute dog were outside a supermarket, the groceries bag dangling from the latter's mouth. The camera was set up. I will only quote here.

"He dropped the groceries in a puddle growled and raced towards us, baring his fangs and snarling. We retreated. He chased us back to our bus, snapping at our bus snapping at our heels and barking."They had finally got into their bus and saved their lives, amidst cries of the town people to leave the poor animal alone. They had got the impression that they were harassing the poor fellow. Then also there was the TV crew aiming to cover the spring cattle roundup on a big ranch in Texas.Here is yet another long quote, "The cowboys" spent long hours in the saddle (to present the perfect scene), coaxing cows and calves out of the rocky ravines and down from the precipices... We walked out besides the trail to film the scene...

"When the lead cows passed us, our cameraman pressed the button and his Arriflex camera started whirring. Only afterwards did we guess that that to a cow an Arriflex motorized camera sounds exactly like a rattlesnake. The first cow bolted from the camera and a sudden wild commotion ran through the whole herd. The next thing, we knew, hundreds of cattle were stampeding back into the hills again with 20 cursing cowboys spurring their horses in hot pursuit. We stood there utterly alone, watching men and horses thunder into the distance."

The message that could be drawn from all this is that animal behaviour is very unpredictable and that leads us to the second topic, about criteria of good literature, more topical than the first with September being the month of literature. It is on the issue whether a piece of writing or literary work that contains rather profuse matter from others' writings cannot be considered good literature. In fact my own essay seems to suffer from this fault since I have included only one experience of mine but given a trinity of experiences from another writer's article, quoting generously too. And what makes matters worse or more muddled is that, that writer too had been quoting from two heads of TV crews. Only the parakeet story is his genuine experience. Come to think of it, isn't a good segment of writing, a case of reproducing from other writers, sometimes mere reproduction that approximates to plagiarism and can be legally questioned, some developing on others' ideas, some, critical of others ideas though presented in his or her work, some used for buttressing the writer's own content that could be considered as of a very high calibre.

This issue pregnant with many implications is certainly not as inconsequential as the issues of Texas cows running away from cameras and a little dog in full fury chasing a TV crew to their bus or Sheba, my friend's dog, more correctly his female counterpart, just stubbornly refusing to drag in and husk a coconut to satisfy the whim of a local TV agent so that he could flash his name on the screen while publicising an animal stunt.

And to quote the parakeet "That's the way it is." Or should the "Way it is" i.e. discriminating against works that bracket long extracts from other works to serve a genuine purpose the author has in mind, change?